


Anodyne

by Nos4a2no9



Category: Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-18
Updated: 2009-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:16:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nos4a2no9/pseuds/Nos4a2no9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ianto’s numb, and he likes it that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anodyne

**Author's Note:**

> Set after "Countrycide," with some spoilers for "Cyberwoman" thrown in. Many thanks to my fearless partner in crime, [](http://dessert-first.livejournal.com/profile)[**dessert_first**](http://dessert-first.livejournal.com/), for singing the praises of Captain Jack even when I refused to listen, and for being such a kind and thoughtful beta.

In the days after Lisa Hallet’s death (or, in the days following the death of the thing that killed Lisa, depending on one’s point of view) Ianto Jones felt nothing but a blissful sense of disconnection.

It was, he supposed, his body’s natural way of protecting itself. His mind was consumed with grief and self-destruction, but his body continued on. He felt things, of course—sorrow, guilt, fear—but one must eat and sleep and breathe, after all. One didn’t just _stop_ , even if one might wish otherwise.

And so he woke and showered, dressed and breakfasted. He took no note of what sort of marmalade his body had selected for his toast, or what colour tie his body had chosen for him to wear. And when his body took Ianto off to work, it found tasks to occupy his time, and it certainly didn't allow him to dwell on what he'd lost.

After they’d cleared away the conversion unit and dealt with the bodies, Jack asked Ianto if he wanted to continue on at Torchwood. That blissful numbness had already taken hold, and so Ianto hadn’t really had an answer ready.

“I don’t know, Sir,” Ianto had said. Jack nodded, as if he’d anticipated this answer, and looked down at the mess of the Hub.

“Help me put it right, for now,” Jack had suggested. “Until you figure it out.”

At work Ianto cleaned and organized and made himself as invisible as possible. He’d had considerable experience at doing so, and his body seemed perfectly capable of continuing on with the charade he’d established when he’d started at Torchwood Three. The others took no more notice of him now than they ever did, apart from lingering looks of pity or, in Owen’s case, fear mixed with revulsion. But such reactions hardly mattered to his body. His body needed to be fed and clothed and kept warm, and work provided a means to do so. It didn’t matter how the others felt about him, now.

And work was, at the very least, a good way to pass the time.

Sometimes he paused in the midst of wiping down the autopsy table or filing away the latest bit of alien technology, and the fog would lift a bit. His body had carried him through the mundane tasks in the period after Lisa’s death, and in those brief moments when he’d come back to himself, feeling disoriented and fearful for his sanity, Ianto marveled at his body’s ruthless instinct for self-preservation.

Did everyone possess such a quality? Surely they must. He’d seen enough disasters to understand that people would do anything in the name of self-preservation. No matter how dire the circumstances, how great the threat, how intense the pain, people got through it. And perhaps they did so by disconnecting mind from body.

It was…easy, at any rate. Easier than thinking about the things he’d done.

~

Time passed in Torchwood as time always did: noisily, messily, and with a great deal of shouting. He was numb to most of it. He was dimly aware of a new case, a new threat, but his body didn’t feel it was particularly important, and so his mind took no notice, either.

And it wasn’t until he was lying facedown on an earthen floor, choking back on a rag that smelled of blood and struggling against the bindings on his wrist, absolutely, positively certain that he was about to die, that his mind woke up.

His mind, Ianto noted with a keen sense of frustration, had terrible timing.

His face was battered and swollen, and he was quite certain he’d broken his nose. And even though his entire body was shrieking with pain, his mind was finally clear. And what it said was, “You’re going to die.” It seemed rather a waste.

After Jack had rushed in, guns blazing and a terrible expression on his face, and saved them all, it had taken Ianto some time to realize that he wasn’t dead. Even when their bruised little group had returned to Cardiff and it was all over ( _Not over. It’ll never be over. But done._ ) he’d sat for a long time in front of the monitors. With every breath he reminded himself, _You’re alive. You’re alive_.

He repeated this mantra as he sat alone in the tourist center and watched the others exit the building. Tosh, Owen and Gwen all but fled the Hub, eager for home and whatever comforts that awaited them there.

Ianto’s home was a cramped, impersonal two-room flat that still echoed with everything he’d lost, and so he stayed behind and tried to remember that he hadn’t actually died.

He didn’t bother to look for Jack, knowing full well that his employer would slink off to his office and nurse his wounds in private.

For his part, Ianto felt only a driving need to get clean. He slipped into the communal shower just off the main cellblock and stripped quickly, shivering in the chilly room. When he finally stepped under the spray of water he turned the tap on full, and showered with water so hot that it made his skin tingle painfully.

But for the first time in weeks, he didn’t listen to his body. He slumped forward and rested his forehead against the cool tile wall, shivering as the hot water washed over his back and buttocks and vanished down the drain. It stung, but what was one more pain? That was life. One pain after another. One more injury. One more death. Six weeks ago he’d watched the only person he’d ever loved—the only person who had ever loved _him_ —executed by the very people he made coffee for. The people whose drycleaning he did. And sixteen hours ago he’d been kidnapped by cannibals and beaten to a bloody pulp. That was life.

That was _his_ life. Bad things happened, and his mind certainly knew that. It was past time his body understood it, too. Retreating from the truth wouldn’t change anything.

He heard the ring of footsteps on the tiled floor, and twisted around, blinking through the curtain of water pouring over his head. His left eye had all but swollen shut, and he couldn’t see much of anything in the shower room.

“Ianto Jones,” Jack said, and he sounded almost chiding. Rather like a mother who’d just discovered that her child had torn a hole in his new jumper. _What a mess you’ve made of yourself, Ianto_.

He turned back under the spray, bowing his head so that the water rushed over him until he was deaf and blind and drowning.

When Jack touched his back he started, but Jack’s touch was gentle, and Ianto forced himself to relax, cataloguing the novel sensation of another person’s touch. Jack didn’t comment on the temperature of the water, but instead reached past Ianto to adjust the tap. The water turned cooler, still hot but no longer burning. Ianto wasn’t sure how he felt about that. His body certainly had an opinion, but he was finished with listening to his body. It had only brought him here, after all. Carried him through the days until he was here, and finally ready to have a good old-fashioned mental breakdown.

But Jack was here too, and so Ianto didn’t move. He turned away and faced the wall, and he wasn’t surprised when he heard the faint metal ting! of Jack’s belt buckle hitting the tile floor, followed by the soft thump of shoes and clothing falling into a heap next to Ianto’s own pile.

He wasn’t surprised when Jack stepped in behind him. It felt inevitable, in a strange way. Like gravity.

“How’s the nose?” Jack asked conversationally, reaching for a bottle of bodywash someone—Tosh, perhaps, or more likely Owen—had left behind. Ianto watched for a moment as Jack squirted some of the blue soap into his hand, and then closed his eyes and turned away.

“Hurts,” he said.

“Yeah.” Jack stepped closer; Ianto could feel the heat radiating off his skin, warmer even than the water. “I’ll bet.”

For a long moment there was silence, just the drumming of the water and the dull thud of Ianto’s own heartbeat, which he could feel echoed in the throbbing of his blacked eye. He’d almost succeeded in being able to forget Jack’s presence, but the first soft, gentle touch reminded him how persistent Jack could be. He was rubbing Ianto’s skin in small, careful circles, palms pressed flat to his back. His hands glided slickly over Ianto’s back, and Jack was… Jack was washing him, Ianto realized.

“You don’t have to do that, Sir,” Ianto said stiffly, ignoring the way his traitorous body tried to lean back into Jack’s touch.

“You’ve had a rough day,” Jack murmured, so close that his voice washed over Ianto like the water: warm, and wet, and only slightly bearable. “Just…relax, okay?”

His touch was like his voice: gentle, but insistent. When he’d finished with Ianto’s back, Jack turned him using only the lightest guiding pressure of his hands, and began to wash his chest. Ianto remained quiet, desperate for his old, familiar numbness. He couldn’t look at Jack’s hands smoothing over his pale chest, trailing down his abdomen, and not…feel.

Jack, he discovered, was very good at bathing another person. They were both naked and wet with steam, yet Jack’s touch remained purely professional. Even when he reached down to soap Ianto’s genitals, Jack was able to project a sense of deliberate distance. Taking care of people was just something Jack’s body seemed to do. As natural and instinctual, in its way, as Ianto’s own drive towards numbness.

He allowed himself to be directed by Jack. He raised his arms so Jack could scrub at his armpits, and lifted his feet so Jack could work the soap between his toes, making soft, squishy noises as he did so. And after Ianto was finally clean ( _never be clean_ ) Jack guided him under the hot spray of water to rinse off the soap.

But even after he was free of any trace of lather, Jack kept making those long, sweeping motions over his body, pausing every now and then to rub at the base of his neck.

Ianto squeezed his eyes shut and tried to blank his mind. But it was too late for that: his mind wouldn’t still, wouldn’t stop. And even as his body kept track of what was happening ( _Jack, solid and real and undeniably **there** , right behind him, drawing him back into a loose embrace, hands skimming across his chest, down the flat of his stomach, arms circling him, holding him, holding him, holding him…_) his mind denied it. This wasn’t…this wasn’t something Ianto did.

“Talk to me,” Jack said again, just as he gave Ianto’s belly one final gentle caress and reached down to touch his penis. And this time, there was no careful distance, no sense of professionalism at all.

Ianto jerked, shocked and enraged and burning with humiliation. What the hell did Jack think he was playing at?

He reached down to break the contact, trying to say something clever, or at least direct. Something like, "Hands to yourself, you sanctimonious twat!" But Ianto found that he could only grip Jack’s wrist tightly, clinging to him as Jack began, ever so slowly, to jerk him off.

Shock. Shock was what paralyzed him. Shock was what trapped his protests, and muffled his ability to say, “No. Please. Don’t.” Shock might even have been responsible for the whimpering noise that escaped him. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want Jack, or Torchwood, and he certainly didn’t want to feel so horribly _alive_.

He wanted Lisa. He wanted his numbness back.

But instead of saying so, or pulling away, he swayed back against Jack. Jack took his weight effortlessly, and seemed to absorb it, whisking it away like the water being sucked down the drain. Jack looked like he really could bear it all: Ianto’s weight, and his sorrow, and his anguish, and his grief.

Ianto kept his eyes closed and focused on the stroke-squeeze-stroke rhythm of Jack’s big warm hand, and the feeling of Jack’s heartbeat thudding slowly against his back, loud as a drum, loud as the rush of water, loud as his own gasping breaths.

He was close. So close. So close to breaking and blowing away, or liquefying and vanishing down the drain. Anything could happen. If Jack was here, and touching him like this, _holding him_ and stroking him and pretending like he mattered…well, anything was possible. Anything could happen. Anything at all.

Jack caught him on a particularly good upstroke, and suddenly Ianto felt a surge of pleasure so intense that it whited out everything else. He came quietly, shaking with it, and would have fallen if Jack hadn’t been there to hold him up.

When Ianto opened his eyes, his field of vision was filled with the mildewing yellow-green tile that always reminded him of faded limes. And when he looked down, he saw that Jack had come too. Ianto felt Jack’s breath ghost across his shoulder, as light and insubstantial as a kiss.

“Please talk to me, Ianto,” Jack said. Jack’s face was so close that all Ianto could see were his lips, cheek, and a bit of his chin.

If he kissed Jack now, would that change anything? Had everything changed already? He’d lost that disconnected feeling, but he wasn’t sure what would be left in its place.

“Jack,” he said, surprised at how rough his voice sounded. Like a stranger’s, or like someone who hadn’t spoken in years and years. He cleared his throat, and tried again. “Jack, what happens now?”

He felt Jack’s lips press against his temple, the kiss strange and oddly tender.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. “What would you like to happen?”

Ianto Jones took a deep breath.

“I want to stay,” he said.

THE END

  


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